


In The Barn

by LulaIsAKitten



Series: Denmark Street musings [35]
Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Lethal White (TV) episode 2, Lethal White (book), kind of a mashup between the two, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 16:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26271580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LulaIsAKitten/pseuds/LulaIsAKitten
Summary: A little addition to the scene in the barn at the very beginning of Lethal White episode 2. For RobinLeStrange, from a discussion around “What would have happened if the Land Rover had been too far away to reach and they were trapped in the barn?”WARNING: If you’re watching the TV series and haven’t read the book, there are spoilers here, events that are in the book that we haven’t yet seen on the series (but hopefully will).
Relationships: Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Series: Denmark Street musings [35]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1035698
Comments: 24
Kudos: 101





	In The Barn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobinLeStrange](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinLeStrange/gifts).



> For reasons that will become clear, although I’m setting this in the physical world depicted in Lethal White (TV) episode 2, I’m using the timeline of Lethal White (book) (but with Barclay still in London like in the episode), so Robin and Matthew and Cormoran and Lorelei have split up, and other things have already happened... It’s a mashup of book and TV.

Gasping for breath, Robin peered out of the back window of the barn, trying to ignore the fierce barking and growling behind her and Strike’s muffled curses at the dogs. She stared up the lane as though trying to will the darkness to lift, but it was no use. She could see nothing. The Land Rover was too far away.

_Who the fuck lets two large German shepherds out unattended? Does someone suspect we’re here? Did they see the lights of the car?_

All questions for later. Right now, all that was standing between them and serious injury from two very angry dogs was Strike’s brute strength in holding the wooden panel over the broken window.

Abandoning ideas of fetching the Land Rover and making their escape, Robin cast about for a more immediate solution.

“Cormoran!”

Strike half-turned, his shoulder braced against the panel, to see Robin lugging a long wooden post towards him. He swiftly seized upon her idea, and between the two of them they managed to wedge the piece of timber between the sheet of wood and the nearest upright holding up the structure of the barn. With the panel tucked behind the edge of the wall on one side and resting on the sill, it wasn’t going anywhere now.

They both took a step back and inspected their handiwork. One of the dogs was still snarling at the gap where their makeshift barrier didn’t quite fit the window. The other had gone ominously quiet.

“The back?” Strike asked.

“Secure,” Robin confirmed. “But the Land Rover’s too far away. Even I’m not that fast, and—”

She stopped abruptly, and Strike swung away from her, furious with himself and his bloody leg, yet again. In his Army heyday, he might have made it, and he was big enough and strong enough to handle at least one dog. Cursing his useless prosthesis, he limped away, making another circuit of the building, checking all potential points of entry.

Robin let him go and found herself sinking to the floor. Filthy as it was, it could hardly make her any dirtier. She cradled her hand against her chest, ignoring the stinging of the cut across her palm, and tried not to think about the bones in the dell.

Had she just dug up a young girl’s body? The thought, combined with the ebbing of adrenaline now that they were temporarily relatively safe, sent a lurch of nausea through her, and she breathed slowly, fervently hoping she wasn’t going to disgrace herself by throwing up in front of Strike.

“Not my first dead body,” he’d said to her once. Well, it wasn’t hers either now, but she was beginning to wonder how many one had to see before the shock lessened. Was it possible to become desensitised to death? She wasn’t sure she wanted to be.

Strike was still crashing about in the other room. She detected an element of temper to his kicks and thumps as he tested sections of wooden wall and old doors, further enraging the dogs outside, who were following the noises and barking angrily, making him swear at them. Robin had three brothers and, until recently, a husband with a bad mood on a hair trigger. She knew when to leave a man alone to work off his frustrations on inanimate objects.

She turned her mind instead to more practical matters. It wasn’t yet late; it might be some hours before the dogs were missed, if indeed they were - maybe they in fact were left to roam the estate at night for security. Either way, the two detectives could be spending some time trapped here, and would need to think up a plausible excuse for their presence if a human backup arrived to see what the dogs were making such a racket about.

Robin rubbed a hand across her face in the darkness. _Think_. They had two torches, and - she patted her pockets - yes, a couple of cereal bars she’d grabbed from the kitchen cupboard on her way out today, hoping to deter herself from eating too many biscuits, whose cheap calories didn’t last in terms of allaying hunger, but were nevertheless very welcome. Unless the barn had some kind of tap, they had no water - the rucksack containing the empty coffee flask, the remainder of the biscuits and the water bottles was on the floor of the Land Rover.

Thinking about water, she suddenly realised that her bladder was a little uncomfortable. Not desperately so, yet, but if they were going to be stuck here for some hours, well...

Strike had slowed down, was making less noise. Robin sat and allowed her tired mind to drift, allowed the stresses of the last few hours to ebb away. This was a moment of reprieve, and hopefully wouldn’t last too long; they just had to wait until the dogs got bored or perhaps started thinking of their dinner.

The flash of Strike’s torch swept across her as he emerged from the other room. He paused to see her sitting in the middle of the floor.

“You all right?” His voice still contained more than a hint of his bad mood, but it was overlaid with concern.

Robin looked up, squinting, and Strike swung the torch beam away. “Sorry,” he muttered gruffly.

“I’m fine,” Robin said, and she meant it. “Let’s leave them to it, they’ll go away in a bit.”

Strike grunted non-committally and moved around the room, checking the walls for gaps. The floor was cold and damp; Robin pulled herself back to her feet.

Finally Strike ran out of perimeter to inspect and stopped. He looked a little uncertain.

“We’re going to have to wait them out,” he said eventually.

“Yeah,” Robin agreed. “Hopefully they’ll wander off and I can make it to the Land Rover.” She chose the pronoun deliberately; despite risking Strike’s further ill temper, she needed him to understand that there was little point in him attempting to reach the vehicle when she was so much faster.

If he noticed, he chose to ignore it. “Turn your torch off.”

“What?”

He gestured at her with his own. “Turn your torch off. Save the batteries. It’s wasteful to have two on.”

Robin nodded and pressed the switch, plunging her side of the room into darkness. Strike set his large torch on the windowsill and angled it across the room, then stood, uncertain again.

“We need something to sit on,” Robin said. “The floor is really damp.” She was wishing she hadn’t succumbed earlier; her bottom was damp now as well as the legs of her trousers and her knees. She was covered in mud and leaves from twice rolling down the side of the dell, and adorned with multiple scratches and nettle stings as well as the cut across her hand. A shiver ran through her, whether from delayed shock or the cold and damp, she wasn’t sure.

Strike had found another wooden panel leaning against the wall by the window; he dragged it across to the wall opposite and laid it on the floor.

“Sit there,” he told her kindly. “That’s got you off the floor, and the internal wall will be less cold to lean on.”

Robin looked at him, his face in shadow in the slanting light cast by the torch. “What about you?”

Their makeshift mat was small. They both eyed it.

“I’ll be fine,” Strike said dismissively.

Robin took a deep breath. “You shouldn’t stay standing for hours,” she said. “Your leg—”

She heard rather than saw his huffed breath of impatience, and chose to believe he was cross with his leg, with his predicament, and not with her. She pressed on.

“I know you don’t like me talking about it, but you tripped before in the dell, and then you’ve had to run. You need to rest it.” She tried to sound stern and not hesitant.

There was a pause, and then Strike sighed, and Robin could feel the tension drain from the air. “You’re right,” he replied gruffly. “I’ll just—” he waved an arm vaguely in the direction of the other room.

“What?”

The tiniest hesitation. “Piss,” he said succinctly. “Once I get down on that floor I shall have a job getting back up, might as well be as comfortable as I can.”

“Oh.” She swung away, glad of the darkness hiding her pink cheeks. Strike limped through the doorway, and Robin settled herself down on the wooden board, wishing she was a bloke too and could just sidle off to a convenient corner. She pulled out her phone and focused on it to stop her from listening to anything she might hear from next door. She had very little battery left, but the device did boast a tiny bit of signal. For a moment she imagined ringing— Who? Only Barclay knew they were here, and they could hardly ask him to drive all this way to help them make a trip of two hundred yards to the Land Rover. And they were trespassing on private land, they couldn’t exactly ring for official help.

Strike was back within a couple of minutes, and looked down at her. “Um, did you want to...?”

Robin hesitated. It would be a welcome reduction to her level of discomfort, but—

“Look, this kind of thing was just routine in the Army, sorry if I’m making you uncomfortable,” Strike said, matter-of-fact. “If you go left, there’s a corner where they swept all the sawdust... I went right.”

Robin wondered if there was a way to use the heat in her cheeks to warm the room. She scrambled to her feet. “Okay.” If Strike could be so practical, unembarrassed by this, then she could too.

She left Strike slowly lowering himself onto the wooden board and slipped into the other room.

When she returned, he was sat with his back to the wall, his legs stuck out in front of him. He’d removed his huge coat.

“We can use this as a blanket,” he said.

Robin eyed the small section of board not taken up by her burly partner’s bulk. He grinned up at her, his earlier bad mood dissipated. “I know, it’ll be cosy. But that’s good, we’ll stay warmer.”

Robin took a slow breath and skirted around Strike’s legs, and sat down gingerly on the board next to him.

“Dogs have gone quiet,” she remarked.

“Yeah, but they’re still out there.” Strike picked up a chip of wood and threw it at the panel covering the window; the thunk it made caused a low growl to issue from beyond the protective screen.

Robin sighed and sat back. Next to her, his shoulder against hers, Strike was breathing unevenly.

A couple of minutes passed while they both ignored Strike’s laboured breaths. Robin was just about to ask him if he was okay when he swore a little under his breath.

“I’m going to have to take the leg off, it’s killing me,” he muttered. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Robin was surprised that he would be reticent, when he’d happily taken his prosthesis off in front of her before, but understood when he clarified:

“It’ll make me slower, if we get an opportunity to make our move.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of that any time soon.”

Strike snorted, unstrapping his leg. “True. But what if someone comes to see what the dogs are up to?”

“They haven’t yet, and they’re quiet now.”

“Also true.”

Strike set the prosthesis aside with a sigh of relief and leaned back against the wall. Silence fell again. Robin shivered a little.

“Here.” Strike pulled his coat across them both. Robin squeezed a little closer to try to get more of herself under it, and her pocket rustled. Suddenly she remembered the cereal bars.

“Food!” she exclaimed, wriggling away to extract the bars, gratified at the way Strike’s face lit up.

“Robin, you’re a life-saver.”

She grinned. “Sorry it’s not biscuits. They’re in the car.”

“Don’t care, I’d eat anything just now,” Strike replied, and stripped open the little packet she passed him and devoured the bar in two bites.

Giggling, Robin ate three quarters of hers and passed the rest across.

Strike hesitated. “You sure?”

Robin grinned. “Your need is greater than mine,” she said, pressing it into his hand. “And anyway, it’s self-preservation. Got to keep your blood sugar levels topped up, keep you in a reasonable mood.”

Strike chuckled and ate the mouthful offered him. Robin screwed up the wrappers to stuff in her pocket, and winced at the sting as the scrunched plastic scraped across the cut on her palm.

“I forgot about your hand,” Strike said with concern. “How is it?”

Robin opened her palm, and Strike took her wrist in his, peering down at it. His big fingers were soft and gentle on her skin.

“A bit sore.” Her voice was huskier than she’d intended. She eyed the top of his head in the dim light as he bent over her hand. His curls, always riotous, were positively shambolic after their exertions this evening. Suddenly she could remember how his hair had felt against the side of her head when she’d hugged him at her wedding a year ago; not wiry, as she’d imagined, but unexpectedly soft.

“It could do with cleaning,” Strike said. “Shame there’s no water.”

“I’ll wash it as soon as we get back to civilisation.” Robin pulled her hand back from Strike’s and her mind back from her wedding.

Another silence, which stretched into long minutes. Robin’s eyes grew heavy and she was still a little cold. The long, long day was catching up on her suddenly - the drive, the confessions and her crying, the champagne, the long wait and then the arduous digging.

Strike began to talk about the case, turning over all the angles in his mind, but Robin struggled to focus on what he was saying. His voice seemed to echo at her from far away, and her head kept trying to sink onto his shoulder.

Presently he stopped and looked down at her.

“Hey,” he said kindly, and Robin attempted to throw off the exhaustion, blinking at him.

“You’ve had a hell of a day,” Strike told her, “and you’ve been sleeping on Vanessa’s sofa for a week. Have a nap.”

“’M fine,” Robin mumbled.

“Like hell you are,” he said, fondly but with a touch of exasperation. “Nothing is going to happen for ages. Go to sleep, I’ll keep watch.”

Robin’s head fell onto Strike’s shoulder seemingly of its own will. Strike pulled his coat across further, covering her up. The smell of her hair, right under his nose, made him have to fight against the urge to lean down to inhale her; he tucked the coat around her arm and sat back with a sigh as Robin’s breathing evened out into sleep.

Strike leaned his head back against the wall and felt the press of Robin’s relaxed weight against his arm, firmly ignoring the glow of pride in his heart at the proof or her trust in him.

She had finally left That Twat, as Strike called Matthew in the privacy of his own head. Sadly, she had stayed long enough to allow the bastard to cheat on her again, but surely this time it was permanent. She was free, now, to—

 _To what?_ he asked himself angrily. She’d also had a significant panic attack this afternoon, and confessed to having had more of them, to have been struggling with her mental health for a year. How much of that was due to her penance of a marriage and how much to the job was debatable - Strike knew all too well how a difficult home life made the demands of the job intolerable - but he had at least a part responsibility, as senior partner and her employer, to help her address the issue. The company should pay for her to have some decent therapy. It was the least he could do after all she had done for him.

Robin snored against his shoulder and shifted a little in her sleep. Strike was transported back to a year ago, to the feeling of Robin in his arms at her wedding, and this was somehow mixed up in his head with the feeling of the shape of her mouth against his, so _soft_ — He clenched his hand into a fist on his thigh, fighting back the urge to touch his lips where the feel of her tingled suddenly.

He sighed and forced his mind back to the case. What key thing was he missing, what hitherto unseen connection?

...

Robin woke, disorientated, wondering what had pulled her from sleep, and then another rumble from Strike told her. He was at an awkward angle, his head tipped back against the wall, and snoring at full throat. She giggled a little and shuffled herself upright from where she had slumped down against his big arm, feeling stiff and cold. Her movement jostled him and his head lolled towards her, then he jolted awake.

Their faces were inches apart. He blinked down at her in the gloom, his eyes on hers, the fog of sleep clearing.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Must’ve dozed off.”

This close, even in the dim light, Robin could see the scar on his lip, the freckles dusting his cheeks, the smudge of dirt on his forehead. She remembered that accidental brush of lips, and found herself suddenly longing for—

The atmosphere shifted, and suddenly she was remembering other moments. A dimly lit office, heated gazes. A moment on Lorelei’s sofa that she’d told herself at the time she’d imagined. His face inches from hers as she wiped the blood from his forehead and pretended not to notice him casting covert glances at her figure in the green dress.

Her heart beating faster, she allowed her gaze to flick to his lips, allowed herself to imagine—

“Robin—” Strike muttered, and her eyes found his again and she saw it, longing mingled with reticence. How many times had he said he had a responsibility, as her employer...

“Cormoran,” she murmured back, and kissed him.

He stilled, and for one endless heartbeat Robin thought she had made a terrible mistake, but then those uneven lips softened against hers and parted, and they were kissing properly.

The angle was awkward. Strike shifted himself a little, half-turning to face her, reaching across to slide a big hand up her arm as he touched his tongue to her lips; trembling, Robin realised she had reached for him too, her fists clutching at the front of his navy jumper. She opened her mouth to him, encouraging him forward, and then his tongue was licking into her mouth and they were kissing passionately.

Strike kissed like he did everything else, with skill and focus. Robin whimpered a little into his mouth as his tongue explored and desire poured through her veins, making her feel weak; then he drew back just a little, inviting her, and she found herself tugging on his jumper, dragging him closer, thrusting her own tongue forwards to explore him in turn. He growled deep in his throat, and she could feel him trembling against her too. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel such passion, such pleasure, from a simple kiss.

Eventually she had to draw back to breathe; panting, they stared at one another in the dim light.

“Robin—” Strike’s voice was hoarse, and he sounded as dazed and amazed as she felt. Robin gazed back at him, her heart fluttering and her hands trembling—

In the distance, a whistle made them both turn their heads sharply; outside the window, the dogs leaped up, barking, and dashed off. They heard the scrabble of paws on leaves fade.

“We have to be fast,” Robin gasped, scrambling to her feet.

“Go,” Strike muttered, grabbing for his prosthesis and starting to roll his trouser leg up as fast as he could. “I’ll be ready.”

Before she’d had time to think, Robin was stumbling from the back of the barn, pulling her torch from her pocket, her stiff, cold muscles loosening up as she ran towards the distant Land Rover, the flutter of her heart forgotten in the heat of the moment. If the dogs chose to disobey their summons and turn back, or if the person calling them to heel heard the vehicle or saw the lights and came to investigate...

She reached the Land Rover without incident and flung herself into it. Speed was the only choice. Gunning the engine, Robin raced the vehicle as fast as she dared down the track; white-faced and limping heavily, Strike lurched from the doorway of the barn to the side door, torch in hand, and scrambled in. The dogs, barking furiously, arrived back just as Robin was flinging the Land Rover around in a lurching reverse manoeuvre; with angry barking following then, they rattled and lurched back up the track and pulled out onto the main road. Heart hammering, Robin put her foot down, and the ancient vehicle surged along the road away from the Chiswell estate.

Panting, they slowly got their breath back. Swearing under his breath with the pain, Strike adjusted his leg which he had attached badly in his haste. Robin slowed to a sensible speed now that their escape was effected.

“Pull in if you see a phone box,” Strike told her. “I’ll ring it in anonymously.”

Robin nodded, and they drove in silence for ten minutes or so. They were safe now within the confines of the vehicle; the kiss hung heavy between them. Robin concentrated on the dark road ahead and tried not to think about what was going to happen next. What on earth had possessed her to kiss him like that? He was her employer, her mentor, her friend, a relationship she valued more highly than any other in her life, and she had ruined it. A voice of reason told her he’d been complicit too, but maybe he’d just been carried away in the moment and was now regretting—

Out of the darkness loomed a phone box and next to it a building, a cricket clubhouse. Robin pulled smoothly in at the side of the road. She could inspect the Land Rover for damage while Strike made the call. She switched off the engine and reached for the door handle.

A big hand on her arm stilled her. “Robin—” Strike’s voice was low.

She turned back to him, heart pounding, and met his gaze. He was staring at her, his eyes asking the question, and Robin didn’t know the answer. She had only just left her husband, was technically still married—

But this was Strike. How often had she wondered, over their years together, if they might... If this was where their relationship could end up?

She smiled at him, soft in the dark of the Land Rover cabin, sliding her hand over his, and he grinned suddenly, taking her breath away. His dark eyes were on hers, and now she was longing to kiss him again, drawn to him as though by a magnet.

“I’ll make this phone call,” he murmured, pulling her back to the prosaic. “And then maybe when we get back to London, we could...talk?”

Robin nodded, blushing like a teenager and hoping he couldn’t see in the dark. “Okay.”

Strike squeezed her arm softly. “Okay.” And then he clambered out of the Land Rover and limped slowly towards the phone box.


End file.
